very helpful lioness

Main menu

You are here

OSBR article on how the Drupal community ticks

Mon, 06/01/2009 - 11:01 -- webchick

Open Source Business Resource (OSBR), a free monthly online journal aimed at business owners, company executives and employees, and participants in the open source community, just published an issue centered around Women in Open Source. The issue was entirely written and edited by women, and contains lots of interesting content that ranges from highlighting work of women contributors, to examining the question of why there aren't more women in open source, to women talking about their experiences in their projects and cool stuff they're doing.

For my part, I wrote an article in the issue called Lessons on Community Management from the Open Source World that basically describes some of my own observations on what makes successful open source projects such as Drupal work. The short version: "It's the community, stupid!" ;) If you've ever been mystified about what makes Drupal tick, or wanted to harness some of that frenzied energy and put it to work within your own organization, it might be worth a read for you.

I highly recommend reading through the issue, as there is lots of great content from lots of smart, awesome authors including Drupal's very own Emma Jane Hobgin, who has recently become a core patch reviewer! :)

Big thanks to both Dru Lavigne and Rikki Kite for putting this issue together!

Comments

You're right on about perfectionistic withdrawal and isolation, and these remarks are very encouraging. I have indeed always been terrified to contribute to a project where the "real developers" are just going to laugh at my code.

I went to look at the women in open source list on the Geek Feminism Wiki and had a huge argument with myself over whether I should put my name in there. I've been writing, speaking, teaching, and course developing around open source for over 10 years but somehow since I'm not a developer I felt like I didn't belong there.